


Endless Worry and Calamitous Love

by ArvenaPeredhel



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, Helcaraxe Trauma, Turgon is trying his best, friendly conversation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:13:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27083926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArvenaPeredhel/pseuds/ArvenaPeredhel
Summary: After the Nirnaeth, looking back.
Relationships: Glorfindel & Idril Celebrindal
Comments: 8
Kudos: 18
Collections: Innumerable Stars 2020





	Endless Worry and Calamitous Love

**Author's Note:**

  * For [keiliss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/keiliss/gifts).



The King is dead, long live the king, or so the harpers sing, and there is ice under her fingernails, nonexistent and hanging in her memory. She is standing on a balcony, on the edge of a courtyard, leaning out over the railing on elbows and tiptoes, watching her people mill about below, and she is tiny and blinded by snow and ice and sinking, sinking, sinking. She is suspended between air and earth, between sky and snow, and only one of her lives is the truth.

She breathes in, shivering. The cold never leaves her bones. The cold lives with her, moves as she does, turns the world to shining terrifying beauty. The cold winds itself about her and keeps her company in the darkness when no one else is there to hear her weeping. The cold is thick, a bitter blanket, keeping her apart from all else. 

Beneath her, there is a roof being placed over the city market. The storm a fortnight ago was worse than any they’d weathered before, freezing rain and hail pouring out of thick black clouds like heavy smoke, and no one wants to take a chance of being caught in such a deluge again. The storm had broken in a furious  _ crack  _ of thunder as her father and the surviving soldiers came stumbling back through the gates. She suspects it was some sort of punishment from Morgoth, a bitter curse in its own way daring them to challenge him a second time. 

It reminds her of ice in the darkness, and of the world breaking apart beneath tiny feet. Even now, it lingers, for the clouds have not broken since the deluge and devastation. They whisper to her, or seem to, taking her back, promising yet more misery to come.  _ And I am trapped,  _ she realizes,  _ helpless to resist, helpless to fight, pinned down beneath glass like a moth in a scholar’s study.  _ The storm and the cold curl about her, and she is high above the city in the black mist of her thoughts, the storm behind like a terrible wave that she cannot turn to face.

“My lady?” a voice asks, and she flinches and gasps. The illusion of suspension cracks around her, fragmenting in delicate webs, and she whirls round to face whatever has interrupted her solace and solitude, ready for the worst,  _ fearing  _ the worst -

\- Laurëfindil, lord of the House of the Golden Flower, stands in the entrance to the courtyard. He is dressed for court and council, though like all the nobles of their city he now walks girt with a sword. 

“Oh,” she says, her voice suddenly small, and she realizes she is shivering. “Oh.”

He steps toward her, one arm extended. The Sun catches his hair, turning it to dazzling molten gold, and seeing it seems to break the spell that holds her. She sighs, and sags back against the alabaster railing, turning away from the emptiness of air behind her.

“Itarillë,” Laurëfindil says, and she laughs in spite of her fear because it is the same voice, the same tone and timbre, as when he first held her, first pulled her out of a yawning crack in the Ice that opened up under where she stood. 

“I feel so trapped, anymore,” she admits, gesturing around her to the air, at once golden and black. “And I know it isn’t going to change for the better.”

“I’d tell you that you’re wrong,” he says, “but I fear it will be worse ere anything improves, if today’s council was representative.”

“What is the news, then?” Itarillë asks, watching as he crosses the courtyard.

“As near as we can tell, only Doriath and Nargothrond are not fallen,” he tells her, coming to join her on the railing. “The sons of Fëanáro are scattered and lost, and the eastern marches are in the Enemy’s hands. Hithlum is overrun, and Dor-lómin given over to the Men who serve Moringotto.”

“And Atya is High King,” she finishes with a somber shake of her head. “In truth, if I guess right.”

“You do.” This time, it is his turn to sigh. “We heard from Thorondor at last, and his kindred. They confirm they’ve heard no whisper of  _ Aran  _ Findekáno alive and imprisoned.”

“And would they?”

“Do you think the Enemy would be unable to boast of it?”

“You have a good point,” she admits with an almost-smile. “I suppose we can take comfort in the fact that some things never change.”

“The nature of evil is fundamentally dull,” Laurëfindil says, and he’s smirking. “If you’ve seen one childish attempt to make us take them seriously, you’ve seen them all.”

“One would think my father would do more to stand against their endless troublemaking, though.”

“Your father is doing all he can, and I can promise you that,” Laurëfindil corrects her. “He’s mourning, and doing so in his fashion.”

“Which means he’s totally alone, by his own will.”

“Yes,” he sighs, shaking his head. “You would think he’d realize we will stand with him.”

“He’s afraid of losing you,” Itarillë says, by way of attempting to explain. “Of losing  _ me,  _ and all we’ve built, and - he  _ tries.  _ He tries so very hard.”

“I wish he would stop keeping us at arms’ length.”

“You could sooner wish that Arien would rise in the West.”

“Or that Itarillë Silver-foot would smile more.”

This makes her blush, but only a little; he’s grinning at her so she can’t be too angry with him. Instead, she shrugs, shifting positions to better look at him.

“You always have a way of making the world seem less dark, did you know that?” she asks. “Even when we first met.” 

“Really?” he says, laughing now. “When we first met I was far too concerned with making sure you didn’t fall to your death to worry about making the world bright.”

“You saved me,” she explains. “That  _ is  _ making the world bright, whether you like it or not.”

For a moment, their eyes lock, and they’re sliding back in time to the deep, bone-shattering chill that left countless  _ eldar  _ frozen in place and suffocating on lungs coated with ice. There had been barely any light on the Helcaraxë, only the faint gleam of a few stone lamps and the eerie, omnipresent gleam of the pale snow, and Itarillë had strayed from her father’s side while he and his sister had spoken in hushed voices of despair and fear. She had been far from any help when the Ice groaned and split where she stood, and only Laurëfindil’s quick thinking and quicker feet had saved her from her mother’s fate. Suddenly, rather than plunging to her death in freezing water, she had been wrapped up in a cloak edged with frost, held close to a pounding heart she could feel through many soaked layers. 

_ “Itarillë,”  _ his voice echoes in her thoughts, a memory blazing against the cold,  _ “I have you. I have you. You’re safe.” _

It had been the beginning of a friendship, one that even her father with his endless anxieties and fears of loss and loneliness couldn’t argue with. He had stayed close to her ever since. 

Laurëfindil smiles at her, and half-bows in respect and deference. 

“You are the bright thing, my lady,” he tells her, and she laughs at him. 

“That seems rather obsequious to say,” she retorts, “for someone with your hair.”

He chuckles, and they trade gentle barbs back and forth as the clouds swirl overhead, and somehow, she finds herself much less alone. 

Whatever the coming storm brings, she can and will face it with friends by her side. 


End file.
